


Roll With It

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Series: Dean Winchester Bingo [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: College Boy Sam Winchester, Dean & Cas Are Bros, M/M, Military AU, Soldier Castiel, Soldier Dean Winchester, Soulmate AU, Soulmate Misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: Dean Winchester is straight.  He doesn't have a problem with people who aren't, he's just not in that group.  So he's incredibly weirded out when he gets called off duty to be introduced to his soulmate - who turns out to be Castiel Milton.  A dude.Thankfully, Dean's got a good idea what happened.  Milton's not exactly an uncommon name, and this dude, Castiel... perfect for his little brother.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Sam Winchester
Series: Dean Winchester Bingo [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1347883
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dean Winchester Bingo  
> Square: Soulmate AU
> 
> Written for SPN Genre Bingo  
> Square: Soulmate AU
> 
> Written for Good Things Happen Bingo  
> Square: Found Family

“Milton! Winchester! Pack your gear and come with me!”

Dean was halfway packed before it occurred to him to even question what he was doing. Growing up John Winchester’s son had made it easy to just obey orders without even thinking, let alone questioning. He’d only been stationed here a few days, though. They shouldn’t be shipping him off anywhere. No reason he couldn’t stay in the barracks like everyone else.

Another advantage of being John Winchester’s son: Dean kept this entirely to himself. When the lieutenant needed him to know what was going on, he’d be told.

Castiel Milton had been here a little over a year. Everyone Dean talked to called him a good soldier, the guy you wanted at your back in the field, but you didn’t want to socialize with him if you didn’t have to. He was a nerd, didn’t like going out drinking, preferred to spend his down time sitting quietly playing chess on his phone. He hadn’t interacted with Castiel much, but it seemed that was about to change.

Castiel hadn’t taken very long to pack, so when Dean was ready, Lieutenant Adler led them off. Dean balked when he realized where they were going. “Sir? You sure about this?”

“Orders from above my head,” the lieutenant said. “Don’t ask me about it.”

“If you say so, sir.” Dean glanced over at Castiel, whose entire body was tense in a way Dean had never seen him. They both followed Adler without another word while he led them to the apartment building reserved for soulmates.

He unlocked apartment 2C and put a key in each of their hands. “Congratulations. You two have the rest of today and tomorrow off to sort this out, but Thursday your butts better be on time for PT and fit to perform, understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said, snapping out a salute.

“That shouldn’t be a problem, sir.” Castiel added his own salute, prompting the response from the lieutenant before he walked off.

Castiel set his bags down inside the apartment and turned to Dean. “My apologies. During my physical yesterday, the doctor noticed that my soulmark had come in, and… well.” He shoved up the sleeve of his jacket to show the ornate script on his arm that very clearly said _Winchester_. “He must have jumped to conclusions.”

Dean peeled off his jacket and held out his arm. “This might’ve helped with the jump.” His soulmark read _Milton_. “It showed up when I got my orders transferring me here.”

“Huh. Well, then. This is awkward.”

“I’ll say. Look. Don’t take this personally, but you’re so not my type. I’m straight. Completely straight. This isn’t a closet thing either, I’m just not into dudes that way.”

Castiel raised an eyebrow. “For someone who’s so certain it’s not a closet thing, you’re protesting quite a bit.”

“Well, I just got assigned soulmate quarters with a dude, I’m a little freaked out right now!” Dean walked over to the couch and plopped down. It felt comfortable, a surprise considering the usual comfort level of Army-issue stuff. He’d probably survive sleeping on it. “I take it you’re gay, or bi or pan or whatever?”

“Yes.” Castiel let his face relax back to its usual neutral expression. “You can relax, though, you’re not my type. If you’re not interested either, I’m certainly not going to try to force things. We can go to the lieutenant and tell him there’s been some kind of mistake…”

“Or we can suck it up, let everyone else here think what they wanna think, and have the good accommodations until we get to go home,” Dean said. “There anyone here who is your type?”

“Not now. It may sound odd considering I joined up, but my type tends to not do well in the military.”

“Why’s that?”

“Too smart and too independent. And now, the type is even stricter, since I have a name.”

Smart, independent, and named Winchester, huh? “Sounds like I need to introduce you to my little brother. He’s finishing up his undergrad at Stanford, and then he’s gonna go to law school. Not sure he’s spoken to Dad since he walked out for college.”

“Why not?”

“When Sammy started his last year of high school, Dad had the paperwork all filled out for him to do the same training program I did, and then you enlist right out of school. Sam told him to shove it, he wasn’t joining up. When he showed Dad the full ride he got to Stanford, Dad told him he wasn’t going. Sam walked out and hasn’t spoken to him since.” In the four years since, Dean had never stopped thanking his lucky stars that he’d been on duty in Georgia instead of in Kansas and couldn’t have put himself in the middle of that fight if he’d wanted to. As it was, he’d had to make a difficult choice. John called demanding that Dean pass on any intel he received about his brother’s whereabouts, and Sam called and told Dean that he wanted to stay in contact but was afraid of Dean passing information to John. After searching his soul for the whole thirty seconds it took to search the worthless thing, he’d told Sam that he wouldn’t pass anything on to John. If John didn’t like it, he could think back on all the years he’d told Dean that nothing was more important than taking care of Sammy.

“I see.” Castiel was smiling, something Dean tried to remember ever having seen before. He couldn’t. “Stanford, telling your dad to ‘shove it’, and if he’s your brother I assume his name is Winchester as well. That would indeed seem to fit my type.”

“Next time I call Sammy, I’ll ask him about his soulmark. Haven’t done that yet, hell, he may not even have his yet.” Dean sat up. “What do we do if this turns out not to be a mistake, dude? I can’t believe you’re my soulmate, but the timing and your name and everything, what if you are?”

Castiel sighed and settled into a chair. “Then either we resign ourselves to being with someone we’re not interested in, or we decide that other than taking advantage of the benefits of having a soulmate in the service we’re not going to do anything about it. You’re free to pursue anyone who does interest you, and so am I.” Castiel cast a glance at the door to the bedroom. “What do you want to do about sleeping arrangements? There’s only the one bed.”

“From the time he was six months old until I shipped out for basic, I shared a bed with my little brother the octopus human space heater.” He paused, running that back, but decided to just let it go. “If you’re gonna have a problem sharing the bed with me, I can sleep right here. If not, we can share.”

Castiel tilted his head, squinting at Dean in curiosity. “Are you sure? If I’m the one causing the problem, shouldn’t I be the one…?”

“Look. You’re my brother now. Ain’t much I wouldn’t do for my brother.” Castiel was still making the confused face at him, so Dean rolled his eyes and got to his feet to punch Castiel’s shoulder. “Look, dude. Don’t diss Zeppelin, when it’s your turn to do the grocery shopping don’t forget the pie, if you can’t appreciate my baby then at least fake it well, and if you do turn out to be Sammy’s soulmate, don’t do him wrong. Simple rules. You can manage that, we’re golden.”

The confusion had disappeared, but it came right back. “You have a baby? Where?”

“Not a baby baby. I’m talking about my car.” Dean pulled out his phone and opened the photo album of his gorgeous black Impala. “I make my brother send me a picture once a week to make sure he hasn’t fucked it up.”

Dean and Castiel both took the inevitable ribbing from the rest of their unit with good grace when they returned to duty. Benny was the worst of the teasers, but he also dragged Dean aside when there was a chance. “You okay, man? Your soulmate turning out to be Castiel?”

“Don’t tell the brass, but we think there was a miscommunication, he’s actually my little brother’s soulmate.” Dean sure hoped so. The enforced socialization had given Dean the chance to get past Castiel’s standoffish stoic nature, to see the dry sarcastic wit and genuine love of humanity underneath. Soulmates or not, Sammy was going to love this guy, and the idea of anyone not loving Sammy was just unthinkable.

“So where’s that leave you? You got his name, brother.”

“I have Milton. It’s not Smith, but it’s not some random-ass unique bastardization of a Polish or Slavic name either. I can think of three off the top of my head I went to school with.” He’d asked Castiel, of course. Cas had an older sister, who had a soulmark reading Cassidy, two younger sisters, one who was asexual and the other sixteen, and a female Milton cousin who Castiel said Dean was better off never knowing. None of those sounded promising.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets the chance to put his theory to the test.

It was nearly a week before Dean got the chance to call Sam. When he got the new picture of Baby, he had to readjust his priorities for the phone call, too. “The hell’d you do to her?”

“Nothing. I swear. I took her to go for groceries, and when I came out, this asshat had parked too close and slammed his door open into her.” Dean closed his eyes and forced down the rage. Asking Sam to double-park her was a bad idea itself. “Bobby’s out there…”

“Wait, what? Bobby?” He couldn’t remember any Bobby among Sam’s friends from school. Only Bobby he could think of was, “Singer?”

“Yeah, Bobby Singer, his stepdaughter or something…”

“Bobby got married?!” Which was the bigger shock, Dean tried to decide. Cranky old Bobby Singer finding a woman to marry after losing his wife to a drug dealer and nearly drinking himself to death on a regular basis, or Bobby showing up in Palo Alto and doing Sam a favor after the epic fight with John Winchester. He settled on the wife. Bobby would understand and respect walking the hell away from John and never looking back.

“Not exactly, and would you quit interrupting me?” Dean rolled his eyes and let his silence serve as his promise. “Bobby has a good friend whose husband died a long time ago, so her daughter looks up to him as a father figure. She’s here touring Stanford, and Bobby came with them. I happened to run into them after class and it turns out his beef with Dad doesn’t extend to us. Bobby wants you to call him, by the way. Anyway, since he’s here, he’s doing the work to fix up your car.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. Can always trust Bobby to take care of my baby.” Dean paused, trying to figure out how to bring up the next important topic. “So other than Bobby showing up out of nowhere, how’s your week been?”

“Eh. We’re hitting the point in the quarter where it’s lost the shiny new challenges factor and it’s starting to feel like work again, just in time for midterms. I’ve been buried in study groups and research and law school applications. One good thing, yesterday I got notified that I have an interview here at the law school. I’m accepted as long as I don’t fuck up my senior year, and the interview is for a full-ride scholarship. And then. Um.”

“Great to hear about the full ride, you know I’ll help however I can but that’s not gonna be near enough for law school. Dad ain’t gonna do shit, so you’d have to work, and I don’t know how that would work with law school.” Dean looked up as the door opened and Castiel wandered in, eyes on his phone as he texted. “What’s the um about?”

“I, uh… look, it’s probably not… ow!”

“Ow? Sammy, what happened?” Dean started pacing, trying to work off the big brother beat the shit out of whatever hurt my little brother instincts since he probably couldn’t do anything from half a world away.

“Jess kicked me to get me to stop trying to talk myself out of telling you about this.” Dean rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall, letting the residual rage bleed out. Jess was Sam’s best friend. If she kicked him, he deserved it. “I got my soulmark last Tuesday.”

“Oh really.” Dean’s eyes once again sought out Castiel. “What’s it say?”

“Milton. I got into the student directory and contacted every Milton I found there, but no one came back with a Winchester soulmark. No Miltons at work. Any ideas?”

“Yeah, actually.” Dean couldn’t help the huge smile growing on his face. “So I had a weird-ass week here.”

“Okay…”

“Tuesday, I get called off-duty and told to pack to move. I didn’t tell you, but my soulmark’s Milton, too. Got it just before I shipped out. Well, turns out there’s a Milton here with a Winchester soulmark, and they jumped to conclusions. Reasonable ones, but I’m pretty sure wrong.” Castiel had looked up from his phone at that, staring at him with huge blue eyes.

Sam groaned. “Dean, give her a chance, would you?”

“That’s the thing, Sammy. Not a her. _He_ is an awesome dude, but still a dude.” He let that sink in for a bit before adding, “Pretty sure he’s your dude. Been talking to him and you two are gonna love each other.”

“You’re serious. You really think you ended up being mistaken for soulmates with my soulmate?”

“I really do, Sam. Hang on a sec.” Dean put the phone against his shoulder. “Cas? Wanna talk to my brother, see if there’s anything to my theory?”

Cas shook his head, but he put down his phone and held out his hand. His voice was even raspier than usual as he said, “I’d have preferred a little more warning, but I suppose all warning would do would be to let me work myself up to an even more nervous state.”

“Yeah, probably.” Dean picked the phone back up. “Heya, Sammy, I’m gonna let you talk to Castiel. Want me to hand it over and leave, hand it over and stay, or put it on speaker?”

“Hand it over and stay,” Sam said, exactly as Dean had expected.

Dean handed the phone to Castiel. “I’m here if you need prompting.” The eyeroll was the most epic he’d seen from Castiel yet, which was saying a lot. It started out well, Castiel introducing himself and running through a brief history. Military family, grandfather made it wealthy as a writer and inventor but refused to pay for his kids to go to school unless they served in the military first and Castiel’s father had taken that to heart and done the same for his children. Castiel was planning to leave the service when this tour was up to go to school, but hadn’t done much considering what, exactly, to do there.

Dean was just about to leave – not for long, just long enough to take care of a couple things before coming back – when he heard Castiel’s foot enter his mouth. “Your brother tells me you have a problem with authority.” Two seconds later, Castiel was staring at the phone curiously and handing it back to Dean. “He hung up on me.”

Dean pulled his palm away from his face to take the phone from Castiel. “Well, yeah, dude, one of the few things he knows about you at this point is that you come from a military family where going against the family plan gets you kicked out, and you phrase it as a problem instead of calling it an independent streak or whatever. Can you blame him?”

Castiel’s head tilted in confusion, but the confusion didn’t last long. “I see. Yes, I can understand his irritation. How do I fix this?”

“Well, first, I do some damage control.” Dean said a quick prayer to Sam to pick the fuck up and then hit redial. It took longer than usual for Sam to pick up, but he did.

“If that’s my soulmate, then he can fuck off.”

“Look, Sammy, he didn’t mean it the way it sounded. One of the first things he said to me was that his type didn’t do well in the military because they were too independent. He’s awkward as hell, but he’s not a bad guy, and he doesn’t think any less of you for your decision to walk out on Dad.” Dean had to smirk. Here Dean was playing peacemaker between Sam and someone who should be fighting for him instead of against him. At least this time, it was a genuine miscommunication instead of a fundamental difference in values.

“Fine. Put Castiel back on.”

“Sure thing, Sammy, but give him a chance, huh? He’s not Dad, he doesn’t deserve your hostility and suspicion.” Sam muttered something that sounded vaguely like agreement, so Dean handed over the phone.

The first thing out of Castiel’s mouth was definitely promising. “I apologize, Sam. I put that badly. Dean tells me you have a strong independent streak, which is something I admire. He’s told me a bit about your issues with your father, but I’d like to hear it directly from you, if you don’t mind talking about it?”

From there, Castiel was doing a lot more listening to Sam than talking, and Dean couldn’t make much out of Castiel’s responses. At least things seemed to be going well enough that Dean felt comfortable taking off to go to the bathroom. When he got back, Castiel held the phone out to him. “Sam wishes to speak to you again.”

Dean took the phone. “So? Was I right?”

“You were right. He’s not Dad. He’s reasonable and willing to listen and I agree with your theory that he’s much more likely to be my soulmate than yours. Doesn’t mean I’m using all the time we have to talk talking to him instead of you.”


End file.
